A silver front loader cargo bike sits in a parking lot in front of an electric vehicle charger. A cable runs from the charger to the bike.

Fast Charging A Cargo Bike From An Electric Car Charger

September 18, 2023 by 15 Comments

Fast charging is all the rage with new electric cars touting faster and faster times to full, but other EVs like ebikes and scooters are often left out of the fun with exceedingly slow charging times. [eprotiva] wanted to change this, so he rigged up a fast charging solution for his cargo bike.

Level 2 electric vehicle chargers typically output power at 7 kW with the idea you will fill up your electric car overnight, but when converted down to 60 V DC for a DJI Agras T10 battery, [eprotiva] is able to charge from 20% to 100% capacity in as little as 7 minutes. He originally picked this setup for maxing the regen capability of the bike, but with the high current capability, he found it had the added bonus of fast charging.

The setup uses a Tesla (NACS) plug since they are the most plentiful destination charger, but an adapter allows him to also connect to a J1772 Type 1 connector. The EV charging cable is converted to a standard 240 V computer cable which feeds power to a drone charger. This charger can be set to “fast charge” and then feeds into the battery unit. As an added bonus, many chargers that do cost money don’t start charging until after the first five minutes, so the bike is even cheaper to power than you’d expect.

For some reason, you can watch him do this on TikTok too.

If you too want to join the Personal EV Revolution, be sure to checkout how to choose the right battery for your vehicle and a short history of the Segway.

Two white Chevy Bolt hatchbacks sit side-by-side, immobilized in the street, their roofs festooned with sensors and an orange cone on their hoods like a snowman's nose pointed toward the sky.

Coning Cars For Fun And Non-Profit

September 15, 2023 by 61 Comments

Self-driving cars are being heralded as the wave of the future, but there have been many hiccups along the way. The newest is activists showing how autonomous vehicles are easy to hack with a simple traffic cone.

As we’ve discussed before, self-driving cars aren’t actually that great at driving, and there are a number of conditions that can cause them to fail safe and stop in the middle of the road. Activist group Safe Street Rebel is exploiting this vulnerability by “coning” Waymo and Cruise vehicles in San Francisco. By placing a traffic cone on the vehicle’s hood in the way of the sensors and cameras used to navigate the streets, the vehicles are rendered inoperable. Continue reading “Coning Cars For Fun And Non-Profit” →

Hackaday Podcast 236: The Car Episode, Building Leonardo’s Water Mill, Reviving Radio Shack

September 15, 2023 by 13 Comments

Elliot and Dan got together this time around to recap the week in hacks, and it looks like the Hackaday writing crew very much had cars on their minds. We both took the bait, with tales of privacy-violating cars and taillights that can both cripple a pickup and financially cripple its owner. We went medieval — OK, more like renaissance — on a sawmill, pulled a popular YouTuber out of the toilet, and pondered what an animal-free circus would be like. Is RadioShack coming back? Can an ESP32 board get much smaller than this? And where are all the retro(computer)virus writers? We delve into these questions and more, while still saving a little time to wax on about personal projects.

And although the show is peppered with GSM interference for the first few minutes it’s not actually a clue for the What’s That Sound. (Elliot says sorry!  And edited most it out by swapping over to the backup recording for most of the rest of the show.)

Check out the links below if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!

Where to Follow Hackaday Podcast

Places to follow Hackaday podcasts:

Download it yourself if that’s your jam.

Continue reading “Hackaday Podcast 236: The Car Episode, Building Leonardo’s Water Mill, Reviving Radio Shack” →

A silver and black bike sits in front of a dark grey bridge. It is on a hard surface next to green grass. The bike has a large basket area in front of the steering tube that then connects to the front wheel which is at the other end of the basket from the handlebars. It is best described as a long john bike, but is a more modern take on it than the wooden box Dutch bike.

Building A Cargo Bike Dream

September 12, 2023 by 54 Comments

Cargo bikes can haul an impressive amount of stuff and serve as a car replacement for many folks around the world. While there are more models every year from bike manufacturers, the siren song of a custom build has led [Phil Vandelay] to build his own dream cargo bike.

The latest in a number of experiments in hand-built cargo bike frames, this electrified front-loader is an impressive machine. With a dual suspension and frame-integrated cargo area, this bike can haul in style and comfort. It uses a cable steering system to circumvent the boat-like handling of steering arm long john bikes and includes a number of nice touches like (mostly) internal cable routing.

The video below the break mostly covers welding the frame with [Vandelay]’s drool-worthy frame jig, so be sure to watch Part 2 of the video for how he outfits the bike including the internal cable routing and turning some parts for the cable steering system on the lathe. If you get an urge to build your own cargo bike after following along, he offers plans of this and some of his other cargo bike designs. [Vandelay] says this particular bike is not for the beginner, unlike his previous version built with square tubing.

Looking for more DIY cargo bikes? Checkout this Frankenbike, another front loader, or this Russian trike.

Continue reading “Building A Cargo Bike Dream” →

Your Car Is A Privacy Nightmare On Wheels

September 12, 2023 by 116 Comments

There was a time when a car was a machine, one which only came to life when its key was turned, and functioned simply as a way to get its occupants from point A to B. For most consumers that remains the case, but unfortunately in the last decade its function has changed from the point of view of a car manufacturer. Motor vehicles have become a software product as much as a hardware one, and your car now comes with all the privacy hazards you’d expect from a mobile phone or a computer. The Mozilla Foundation have taken a look at this problem, and their disturbing finding was that every one of the 25 major automotive brands they tested had significant failings.

Their quote that the cars can collect “deeply personal data such as sexual activity, immigration status, race, facial expressions, weight, health and genetic information, and where you drive.” had us wondering just exactly what kind of sensors they incorporate in today’s vehicles. But beyond mild amusement at some of the possibilities, it’s clear that a car manufacturer can glean a significant amount of information and has begun doing so largely without the awareness of the consumer.

We’ve railed about unnecessary over-computerisation of cars in the past, but from an obsolescence and reliability perspective rather than a privacy one, so it’s clear that the two issues are interconnected. There needs to be some level of public awareness that cars can do this to their owners, and while such things as this Mozilla investigation are great, the message needs to appear in more consumer-focused media.

As well as the summary, Mozilla also provide a detailed report broken down by carmaker.

Header: Michael Sheehan, CC BY 2.0.

Out With The Circus Animals, In With The Holograms

September 11, 2023 by 25 Comments

As futuristic as holographic technology may sound, in a sense it’s actually already in widespread commercial use. Concerts and similar events already use volumetric projection, with a fine mesh (hologram mesh or gauze) acting as the medium on which the image is projected to give the illusion of a 3D image. The widespread availability of this technology has now enabled Germany’s Roncalli circus to reintroduce (virtual) animals to its shows after ceasing the use of live lions and elephants in 1991 and other animals in 2018.

For the sticklers among us, these are of course not true holograms, as they do not use a recorded wavefront, nor do they seek to recreate a wavefront. Rather they employ as mentioned volumetric projection to essentially project in ‘thin air’, giving the illusion of a tangible object being present. By simultaneously projecting multiple views, to an observer standing outside the projection mesh, it would thus appear that there is a physical, three-dimensional object which can be observed. In the case of the Roncalli circus there are 11 projectors lining the circumference of the mesh.

To a circus the benefits of this approach are of course manifold, as not only do they no longer have to carry lots of animals around every time the circus moves to a new location – along with the on-site demands – but they get to experiment with new shows and new visuals that were never before possible. Ironically, this could mean that after 3D fizzled out at movie theaters, circuses and similar venues may be in a position to make it commonplace again for the masses.

This Keyboard Doesn’t Work Without Game Boy Cartridges

September 11, 2023 by 9 Comments

Just when we though we’d seen it all when it comes to custom keyboards (or most of it, anyway), along comes [Stu] with the TypeBoy and TypePak. Like the title implies, TypeBoy and TypePak are inseparable.

Let’s talk about TypePak first. Somehow, some way, [Stu] managed to fit the following into an aftermarket Game Boy Advance cartridge: a XIAO BLE microcontroller, a Sharp Memory Display, a shift register, and a LiPo battery. It’s all there in [Stu]’s incredibly detailed blog post linked above.

Amazing, no? And although [Stu] claims that the TypePak is mostly for aesthetics (boy howdy), it will make swapping microcontrollers much easier in the future.

If this looks sort of familiar, you may remember a likely render of [mujimaniac]’s board called the GIGA40 that also employed a cartridge system. Allegedly there is now a working prototype of the GIGA40.

Would you like to give the TypeBoy and TypePak a go? Files are available on GitHub, but this doesn’t seem like a project for the faint of heart.

Speaking of stuffing things in to Game Boy cartridges, check out this SNES cartridge turned hard drive enclosure.

Via KBD